


Always Crashing in the Same Car

by glim



Category: Life on Mars (UK), Merlin (BBC)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Fusion, Crossover, Kink Meme, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-05-23
Updated: 2010-05-23
Packaged: 2017-10-09 16:37:46
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,388
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/89480
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/glim/pseuds/glim
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p><i>It was 1977. By all calculations, Merlin ought to be two years old, living with his mum in their bedsit flat in Ealdor, wearing the blue footie pajamas and begging his mum or his uncle Gaius to read to him after tea.</i> (Merlin/Life on Mars fusion)</p>
            </blockquote>





	Always Crashing in the Same Car

**Author's Note:**

> Originally written for the [kink me merlin prompt](http://community.livejournal.com/kinkme_merlin/11649.html?thread=8407681#t8407681) that requested a Merlin and Life on Mars/Ashes to Ashes fusion where Arthur is Gene Hunt and Merlin could be Sam Tyler or Alex Drake.

Balancing two cups of tea and a pasty, Merlin weaved his way between the canteen tables until he reached the one in the back corner. "Hey. Do you mind if I join you?"

"Of course not." Gwen didn't turn her attention away from her magazine, though, and only smiled once Merlin had lined the sugar, milk, and fresh cup of tea up in front of her. "All right, I'm not mad at you. And thank you."

An almost breathless feeling of relief went through Merlin. He hated when Gwen was upset with him, even when he absolutely deserved it. "I know how you like two cups of tea during your break."

Gwen accepted the tea with another smile and leaned closer to Merlin, lowering her voice and giving him that expression of quiet concern she seemed to get around him a lot. "What were you on about last night? You had one pint, and minutes later, it was like, god, Merlin. I couldn't even understand what you were talking about."

Merlin watched the milk he poured into his own tea swirl in on itself until he stirred in the sugar. "I don't know."

"Or you don't remember?"

"Oh, no, I only had that one pint." Merlin took a sip of his tea and peered over at the magazine Gwen was reading. Shoes and fashion, how to macramé your own plant baskets. Things he'd never have associated with Gwen based on the work she did as detective constable. Which was foolish; of course Gwen had a life outside the police station and outside her friendship with Merlin. Her work, her listening to his clumsy attempts to explain how he ended up in Ealdor, thirty-three years in the past could never be the sum of her world. "It's just, sometimes, I don't know, I feel like I'm caught between now and then."

"Look, if you say you fell through some time portal or something, it's not that I don't want to believe you. I do. Want to. I'm not sure I know _how_ to believe you. Are you sure –"

"Gwen, I haven't even told anyone else. But it was easy to tell you. I'm not crazy," he added, voice suddenly hoarse with desperation. "I'm not."

"I know. I know that. Here, why don't you come to the cinema tonight? With me and Lance."

"Is this some sort of three-way dating proposition?"

"Merlin! No. I mean, not that either of us wouldn't, and not that you're not attractive or anything. That is – you are. Attractive. And even Lance said so." Gwen laughed at herself and shook her head. "Come to the cinema. It'll take your mind off everything else."

"Hm. What are you doing to see?"

"The Star Wars film, I think, that's just come out this week."

For a moment, Merlin was completely and utterly grateful for whatever had caused him to be exiled in the wasteland of time and space that was the nineteen-seventies.

"_Star Wars_? Really?" Merlin could already feel excitement start to bubble up inside him. Untouched, un-remastered, Han-shot-first _Star Wars_. "Yeah. Yeah, all right. I'd love to."

"Love to what? Help interrogate some witnesses to that fiasco down by the old mill? Excellent."

Merlin moved his pasty away when Arthur tried to reach for it. "However did you know. And why me?"

"Because I said so. And what your DCI says goes." Arthur lit a cigarette when Merlin wouldn't let him share his food. "Besides, I need you. You look sweet and sympathetic."

"Whereas you look?"

"Persuasive. Which can be useful."

"I've told you; I know your brand of persuasion. Physical threats. Table banging."

"Shouting," Gwen pointed out, amused.

Arthur glared at them both. "I'll have you know I can be incredibly diplomatic when it's called for. Unfortunately, that's not very often around here. Let's go, Merlin."

"I'll see you later, Gwen. Tonight, if not before." Merlin drank down his tea quickly and ate the pasty on the way out of the canteen.

Arthur brushed his shoulder as they entered the corridor and grimaced with disgust. "What the hell are you wearing? I think my aunt Delores has drapes like that shirt."

. . . . .

It was 1977.

By all calculations, Merlin ought to be two years old, living with his mum in their bedsit flat in Ealdor, wearing the blue footie pajamas, and begging his mum or his uncle Gaius to read to him after tea.

By all normal calculations, anyway.

By some other indecipherable process of calculation, he was thirty-five, living on his own in a bedsit flat in Ealdor, wearing a retro-indie kid's wet dream of a wardrobe, and wondering what the fuck had happened to his life.

It was as if, in the space of a few moments, time had been stripped away and along with it, all remnants of Merlin's life.

Four months ago, he'd been DCI Emrys, working at Ealdor's CID, he'd had a decent flat right outside Ealdor, and he'd had a partner.

Will. William. _Will_. They'd grown up together, lost touch during the years after their boyhood, and tumbled into each other's lives ten years later.

Four months ago, there was a shooting at the youth center where Will was doing most of his work lately.

Four mouths ago, Merlin fought with Will, had told him not to go to the center in the middle of the crisis, to let the police on duty there handle the situation.

Four months ago, there had been a message from Will, a car crash, and Merlin had woken up next to the wrong car, in the wrong clothes, during the wrong year.

. . . . .

"Merlin."

"Arthur."

"_Merlin_."

"… guv?"

"Could you stop breaking into my office before I get to work?" Arthur shuffled through a stack of folders and pulled out a few pieces of paper, frowned at them, and frowned harder at Merlin. "I can always tell when you've been in here, you know."

"How is that even possible. You have no concept of organization. Would you even notice if any of this went missing?" Merlin gestured toward one of the many haphazard piles that made up Arthur's desk.

"There's internal organization. Which, by the way, your mere presence in my office ruins." Still flipping through the folder, Arthur leaned against his desk. He'd brought in two cups of coffee this morning, one of which he shoved closer to Merlin without acknowledging him, and appeared as if he'd managed at least five hours of sleep last night. "What are you doing here, anyway? Not trying to alphabetize things for me again?"

"Ah, no, we learned that system was too difficult for you. Looking for Muirdon's file."

Arthur ignored him for a minute; he glanced at Merlin over the edge of the folder before shutting it and casting it atop an already unsteady pile. A flip through the closest stack and he turned up the folder Merlin had just spent twenty minutes trying to excavate. "The kid with a thing for meter maids?"

"Yeah. There has to be something more than that to it, though."

"What? He goes a little crazy after getting a handful of parking citations, takes it out on the nearest lady in the uniform, gets brought in for creating a public disturbance. Done."

"I don't think that's it. He's done that twice already."

"What more could there be? And, maybe you haven't realized, but Ealdor has bigger problems than idiots who can't park properly."

"He doesn't even own a car, Arthur. He's accosted a police officer, too."

Arthur rubbed a hand over his face. He'd shaved, and his hair was still shower-damp, but there were circles beneath his eyes and the set of his jaw was tense. Four hours of sleep, then, at the most.

"Get out of my chair."

"I'm not making this up."

"Out."

"Arthur –"

"_Out_. Wait," Arthur added after Merlin stood up from the chair. "Take those." He nodded toward the cup of coffee and the folder Merlin had had open in front of him. "And next time you decide I need to see somebody first thing in the morning, send Gwen in here instead. She has nicer, well, nicer everything, though you might be more of a girl than she is."

Merlin rolled his eyes, but his retort caught in his throat. Arthur's eyes tracked up and down his body until they met Merlin's, and the moment between them stretched out, silent and strained, until Arthur jerked his head toward the door. "Come back when you have something I can work with."

. . . . .

Three months ago, Merlin hated Arthur.

To be fair, he also hated the avocado green wallpaper and dingy brown carpet in his flat, the complete lack of mobile phones and diet Coke, and the fact that nothing, not the air, the water, the music or the food, felt familiar.

But Arthur? Arthur was special.

"You can't bully your way into getting whatever you want." Merlin stalked after Arthur, brandishing the arrest warrant Arthur had just shoved into his hand.

"I don't bully people. I persuade them."

"Oh, I know your brand of persuasion and it looks a lot like bullying."

Arthur whipped around as soon as they got to the end of the corridor and backed Merlin against the wall. "I do not bully people. I get what I need when I need it. Do you want to walk into that house without a warrant?"

"No. Of course not. But –"

"But what? You said we needed to talk to these people about the knifings. I got the warrant. We talk."

Merlin let his breath out in an impatient sigh and slid away from Arthur. "Just because your father –"

" – this has _nothing_ to do with my father. Do you see me working for Scotland Yard?" Arthur turned to walk out of the station and toward his car. "No. No you don't."

Merlin followed Arthur, wordlessly this time, and sat next to him in the car while they both fumed.

Arthur drummed his fingers against the steering wheel, lit a cigarette, put it out and tossed it from the window after taking two drags, and started the car.

"Maybe you're right. Maybe I'm too used to getting what I want." Arthur looked at Merlin, down at his own hands, and back out the side window. "But my city comes first. My city, then my team. Maybe you have enough men and resources at Carlisle, or wherever you came from, but I don't. Sometimes I can only follow the very edges of protocol."

The sky was slate grey above them and tiny, drizzly drops of rain speckled the windscreen of Arthur's car. There'd been a spate of attacks down in the poorest parts of the town, over by blocks of flats that would be pulled down and a section of Ealdor that would become gentrified by the time Merlin would become a detective inspector.

"Right. I understand. I do, I only wish…" Merlin considered the half-crumpled warrant in his hand. "Never mind. We might as well go now and try to get this over with."

"Good. Not that I needed your permission. Or even your agreement."

Well, maybe not hate. Intense dislike, bordering on disapproval.

Except when Merlin recalled the strength of Arthur's care for a city he hadn't been raised in, for a city whose people he could only claim as his own after working with them for fifteen years, then he couldn't help but want to keep following Arthur.

. . . . .

"You don't have to wake up, you know."

"… mph?"

"You could stay here."

Merlin pressed his face into his pillow. The dragon puppet on the telly was talking to him again. Or, maybe, he was just dreaming that the dragon on the telly was talking to him. A dream he could wake up from and not have to deal with the way his life was becoming more and more ridiculous.

"I'll wake up. Go away."

"What about Arthur?"

"I hate Arthur. Go away."

"He does need you." The dragon paused, but continued before Merlin could fall back asleep. "We all need you, Merlin. Merlin?"

"Mum?" That got Merlin to push the pillow away and sit up. "Mum, I'm here. I need you, too, Mum. Mum?"

The dragon puppet gave him what Merlin thought was an encouraging nod, but when he pressed his hand to the screen, it fizzled into the monotonous drone of static.

. . . . .

"Those will kill you, you know."

Arthur took back the cigarette he was offering Merlin and brought it to his own lips. "You say that about my driving, too."

"No, your driving is going to kill _me_. Cigarettes, and your unnatural love for caffeine, that's going to kill you." Merlin uncrossed his arms from over his chest and shifted to watch Arthur. "Do you actually eat and sleep?"

"Of course I do."

"You slept in your office last night."

"I did not. I was working. And, who are you, somebody's mum?" Arthur breathed smoke out of the window instead of letting the car fill up with it, something he only did to prevent what he called Merlin's incessant whining. "Are you?" Arthur asked after they'd sat in silence for a minute. "Somebody's well, not mum, I suppose."

"What? Oh. No. I didn't leave that sort of family behind. Just my partner."

Eyes narrowed, Arthur gave him a long look.

"Boyfriend," Merlin finally said and waited for the cutting reply.

It never came. Arthur just kept on staring at him, until he had to turn away, obviously uncomfortable with either Merlin or himself.

"The picture, on your desk –"

"My sister, and my nephew," Arthur said and cut Merlin's attempt at conversation change off short. "What are we waiting around here for again?"

"Muirdon. I really think, this time – "

" – and I don't. Merlin, he attacks meter maids. I'm sitting on unofficial stakeout with you for a recreant who won't pay parking fines?"

"_He doesn't have a car._ You don't listen to me, do you?"

"Sometimes. I'm here, after all."

Merlin eased back into his seat and scrubbed the heels of his hands into his eyes. He'd slept enough for both himself and Arthur last night and still felt exhausted, down to his very bones.

"Come on, Merlin. What do you have for me? Meter maids, traffic wardens. What else?"

"Assaulting a police officer. Brought him in for questioning. He knows you."

Arthur coughed, flicked his cigarette end out the window, and craned his neck to see down the empty road. "He doesn't. How?"

Merlin shrugged. "Aside from how anyone else in this city does? I don't know."

Another moment passed before Arthur decided they'd probably end up sitting here for hours and getting nothing accomplished. He shifted to watch Merlin and grinned a little when Merlin finally noticed him.

"So. Boyfriend?" This time curiosity shone in Arthur's eyes.

"Yeah."

"You miss him, don't you?"

Merlin scrubbed at his face once more. "I do. Yeah, I do. I'm not sure he misses me as much. I'm not... I'm not sure."

Arthur got quiet as the rain got louder, scudding against the windscreen and dashing into the car on a sudden gust of wind. He and Merlin considered each other for a moment, with half-glances at each other's hands and, for a fraction of a second, Merlin allowed himself a half-glance at Arthur's mouth, at his parted lips and the very edge of his tongue.

Arthur wasn't like Will, not really, save they were both obnoxiously stubborn.

Arthur wasn't like Will, but when he reached over and ran his thumb down the slope of Merlin's shoulder and his let his palm rest there, strong and secure, Merlin thought, maybe, he didn't need to be. He could just be Arthur, with his plain, dark suits and his mussed blond hair, his blue eyes that softened when he could close a case and go home to rest for a couple days, his massive loyalty and dedication and...

And that odd little way he smiled when Merlin said something that made him proud.

. . . . .

Two months ago, Merlin thought not hating Arthur, not trying to oppose him or try to change him at every opportunity, was the path homeward. If he could just learn to live here - maybe there was some lesson worked into the map of Ealdor thirty-three years past - then he could learn how to leave.

He'd wanted to organize Arthur, to alphabetize him and break him down, find and refine his constituent parts, perform some sort of personal alchemy on him that would lay bare to Merlin what it meant to be Arthur Penn, DCI in command of Ealdor CID.

After evenings of take-away and endless coffee and cigarettes, of Arthur forcing him to think in different ways, to see information as organized around any number of principles, Merlin found that he'd been the one exposed, the one whose life had been stripped back to elements bare and few.

He'd been wrong about Arthur.

He had no idea if he'd been wrong about himself, too.

. . . . .

Merlin's already attempted to have conversations with Mr. Humphries of _Are You Being Served? _, which had been terrible, given that his much younger self had desperately wanted that very thing, and whatever incarnation of Doctor Who was on telly that year, which had been, predictably, absurd.

Neither had gone any better than the one he was having now with the Creepy Dragon Puppet. He'd woken up, having fallen asleep in the middle of the day, groggy and full of head ache, to find the dragon staring at him.

(At least Mr. Humphries hadn't stared. He'd sort of winked, though.)

"What?" Merlin's voice came out hoarse and low. How long had he been asleep? And what had he been dreaming about. Oh. Yes. Hospital room.

"You think you've lost yourself, but maybe you're just starting to find yourself instead."

"What?" Merlin felt sleep tug at him.

"... lost ..."

He heard his Mum, his uncle, and Will, and a doctor who wasn't his uncle, and he thought, maybe, everything he left behind in 2010 was broken and lost. His body, his life.

Everything here, in this foreign land, one he hasn't been able to map, to calculate, to chart according to time or space, felt real and whole.

And warm. Good and warm, Merlin decided, and fell back asleep before he could try and turn off the muddle of flickering sound and light.

. . . . .

"Today. Is a _beautiful_ day."

The room stilled for a moment, Merlin's announcement and stale cigarette smoke hanging heavy in the air.

"The ... the _sky_." Merlin flung his hand out in a wide, clumsy gesture toward the window. "Which, yeah, all right, looks sort of grey from in here, but, outside - trust me - _completely blue_. Thirty more years of pollution will destroy it before anyone notices, but today? Blue."

"All right, Merlin?" Once Gwen stood up from her desk, the rest of the room refilled with noise. Papers shuffling and typewriter keys clacking and the distant voices. "Merlin? Come on. Why don't you come sit down?"

"What? No - wait, oh god. Gwen. Oh, Gwen." Merlin reeled towards his desk, felt the floor tilt beneath him, and saw his desk slide dangerously out of reach. "Gwen... Gwen, I wish I could show you, on my iPhone..."

"What? Merlin? Show me what... Come sit and tell me."

"Pictures. My friend Jenna - just like you. Like you, Gwen, she wears yellow and goes dancing with her girlfriend…" Merlin flailed and the world slid sideways again.

Gwen's arm was steady and strong around his waist, but Merlin still stumbled against her and nearly tripped over a chair. His limbs felt strange and loose, not quite attached to his body, and the world around him was blurred and pleasant with a fuzzy numbness around all the edges. Rubbing his face into Gwen's shoulder was sort of pleasant, too, as was the way she actually listened to him instead of dismissing whatever he was talking about.

"Pictures? On your phone? Merlin, what did you take this morning?"

"Nothing. Not... they gave it to me, I couldn't... Oh. I remember."

"What?"

"_Everything_."

Everything. All his memories unfolded before him, a kaleidoscope of sound and color, a spinning world of pleasing, sunny phenomena.

He remembered his mum holding him in her lap, stroking his hair and reading to him until he was sleepy.

He remembered his uncle's surgery, the green walls and the heavy curtains, the scent of antiseptic and the sound of his Gaius' voice, deep and familiar.

He remembered the mindless television he liked to watch before going to sleep and the ability to watch movies without already knowing how they would end.

He remembered the way he used to walk to school, the way he walked to work, the walk down the aisle when he graduated from the police academy; his first date with Will, and the time they'd got so drunk, so very drunk on the wine leftover from Jenna's birthday, and how they'd slept together for the first time that night.

He remembered his own birthday, he'd turned thirty-five right before Christmas and, oh, he'd been happy. Really happy.

He remembered -

"Merlin!"

Arthur.

"Merlin, are you drunk?"

There was something about Arthur, something he needed to remember, needed to know, now, not thirty-three years in the future. He needed to know and shape that knowledge into something useful. He needed to help Arthur, right? That's why he was here. Help Arthur. Then go home and help Will.

"Or are you high? Both? Fucking hell, Merlin, come on. You can't walk into the station like this."

"I've done this before," Merlin answered and reached to trace his fingers over the cuff of Arthur's shirt.

"Great. You're not only a useless copper, but a habitually insane one. Stop touching me."

"I'm not. No, no, not insane. Well. Maybe. A little. They gave me painkillers, too much," Merlin's voice slurred on the last words and this time he grasped for Arthur before he could topple over. "M'in hospital, at home, and the _painkillers_."

"Painkillers? For what?"

"_Pain_. Are you entirely stupid, Arthur? I know they have painkillers in the seventies."

"Right." Arthur grabbed Merlin around the shoulders and pulled him away from Gwen. "I'm taking him home."

"I can take him." Gwen's fingers brushed Merlin's fringe from his forehead. "I don't think he's feverish."

"No, I'll handle him. I'll just drop him off at his flat on the way to the warehouse. Besides," Arthur paused to prop Merlin back up when he started to droop in against Arthur's side, "I need to leave somebody in charge here now that Merlin's gone and incapacitated himself."

"Oh. Right. Right, I can do that."

Merlin blinked at Gwen and caught the flash of pride in her eyes, then blinked at Arthur. "Wait. Warehouse? I'm coming."

"Oh, no, you're not. You're going home, and you're sleeping this off, because you're coming back tomorrow to do your job properly."

That was that. Arthur manhandled Merlin out of the station, into his car, and into Merlin's flat, where he unceremoniously dumped Merlin onto the bed and brought him a cup of tea.

"Learn this from your mum? Tea and all?"

Arthur sat down on the edge of the bed, unbuttoning and rolling up his shirt sleeves. "I grew up with my father. And he wasn't very much the tea and sympathy type."

"Mm. You're like me. I only had my mum." The flood of warm memories washed over Merlin again and he nestled back into his pillow and blankets. "Think I'm ready to go home now."

"I think you're ready to go to sleep." Arthur cast him a sidelong glance before leaning in to brush his fingers over Merlin's hair, much in the same way Gwen had, but his touch was slower, gentler than even hers had been. "Where is home, Merlin? Carlisle?"

Merlin shook his head. His body was woozy with drug overdose carried back from years in the future and his defenses were gone. He felt odd and vulnerable in front of Arthur like this, wanting to curl up in bed and forget that he'd ever even had another life before he'd met Arthur or seen Arthur's world. "Far away. It's thirty-three years ago and I don't know how to go home."

Arthur patted his hair and rubbed Merlin's shoulder. "Get some rest. I expect you in early tomorrow."

"Hm. Wait. Arthur? What's at the warehouse?"

"What? Oh. Purported kidnapping. But it doesn't seem to be amounting to much more than a threat. I just want to check." The warm, comforting weight of Arthur's hand settled on Merlin's leg. "Sleep, yeah?"

Merlin nodded; he was sad, and tired, and grateful that he fell asleep before he heard Arthur leave.

. . . . .

"I'm losing myself, John," Merlin said, then couldn't figure out if he was talking to the barman or to the Creepy Dragon Puppet.

Walking out of the pub took him into the station, into Arthur's office.

Arthur's dark, empty office, and in the back of his mind, Merlin could remember that Arthur had left. He'd gone... Where had he gone?

Merlin shuffled through endless scraps of paper.

"He won't come back," Gwen - no, Jenna, wait, Gwen - said.

Merlin pushed the papers off Arthur's desk and stood, only to stumble, and somehow discovered Arthur staring down at him.

Not his Arthur, though, a younger Arthur, brighter eyes and wider smile, one eyebrow raised as he watched Merlin try to gather himself up off the floor.

"You know I won't ask you to come for me, right?"

"What? Why? You're all right, Arthur? I want to go home."

Arthur shrugged, started to turn to walk away, and his eyes were older and more serious when he looked back over his shoulder at Merlin.

"There's been a kidnapping at the warehouse. My father killed his parents, years ago. And he –"

" – he won't stop." Will's voice finished Arthur's sentence. "Years from now, he won't."

Merlin woke up in his bed with a gasp.

. . . . .

In the end, it was Gwen who got Arthur out.

"She drove, she went in and got you. God. I was still so out of it until the end." Merlin smoothed one hand over Arthur's hair. He was pretty beat up - bruises, a few lacerations, a couple broken ribs - but he'd be fine. The glassiness in his eyes and the wanness of his skin would fade in a few days. "When I saw you, I almost thought it was too late. That I was too late."

"How did you know?" Arthur twitched away from Merlin's touch when he want to smooth his hair again. "Haven't we already had the conversation where I remind you not to fuss at me like a mum?"

Merlin's hand fell to the blanket spread over Arthur's lap. His fingers stroked gently, only for a bit, and this time Arthur didn't say anything, not even when Merlin let his hand rest there, protective and firm.

"I don't know. I had a dream."

"So, what, now you dream about me? Or do we have some sort of psychic connection?"

"Um. Neither. I don't know, Arthur. Maybe I'd read something in that rubbish bin you call an office, or in one of Muirdon's files, that triggered my memory in time."

"Maybe. I'm glad. Grateful," Arthur added. "Not that I wasn't holding my own."

"Of course you were. You're the one who shot Muirdon?"

Arthur nodded. "That was for all the meter maids, and traffic wardens, and whoever else got caught up in this. If he wanted me, he should've come for me."

"He did. It was you. Or, or, it was your father."

The expression on Arthur's face changed, grew harder, and he stared down at his bandaged chest. "My father."

"Killed his parents, or, was involved in their deaths. Years ago, I'm not even sure of the circumstances, it was probably an accident. And it was certainly nothing you could've done anything about."

Arthur didn't say anything, and Merlin didn't want to leave, so he didn't say anything more, either. He kept his hand on the blanket, now at Arthur's side, and let the closeness of Arthur's body, the shallow rise and fall of his breath, fill up the space between them and lull him into shutting his eyes. There was something safe about this small space they shared and Merlin felt himself sink into that feeling of safety and did nothing to stop himself.

Eyes gritty, throat dry, and back and neck aching something terrible, Merlin found himself hunched over in his chair and over Arthur's hospital bed. "God. Did you really let me fall asleep in here?"

"You looked so pathetic. It was only a hour, anyway." Arthur's tone, quiet and low, and his hand against the back of Merlin's neck, softened his words considerably. "Go home and get some more rest."

"I don't want to leave you alone," Merlin replied, once again oddly vulnerable in front of Arthur. "I only meant, here, in hospital, without anyone to talk to or yell at."

"Go home." Arthur's hand cupped the back of Merlin's head before he nudged him up off the bed. "Go home, and come get me tomorrow morning after they've decided I'm not bleeding out of any of my internal organs. Oh, and Merlin? I am glad you came for me."

. . . . .

Only a month ago, Merlin would've given anything to go back home. He had so desperately wanted to be able to crack open the dream world in which he'd found himself in the hopes that he would be able to return to the life he used to know.

Yet, when he'd arrived at the warehouse, he had known that what was keeping him in the past was his present, the future created out of a new past he was in a process of fashioning.

And then there was Arthur, who needed him in ways he'd never be able to voice.

If he had to save Arthur a thousand times and make a thousand changes to the future before he could go home, well. He'd just have to do that, then. God knew Arthur needed about all the saving Merlin could manage to come up with.

"Those really will kill you," Merlin said, but handed the cigarette over to Arthur anyway. He was bruised and in pain and had even tried pouting at Merlin when he'd refused to get the cigarettes the first time.

"Let's hope they do, instead of anything, or anyone, else." Arthur smiled and bumped his arm against Merlin's side.

When he finished the smoke halfway and offered it to Merlin, Merlin took it this time, the end still damp from Arthur's mouth. He breathed in deeply and exhaled the smoke out in a long stream away from Arthur. He'd let Arthur's sister fuss at him for most of the morning after Merlin had brought him home from the hospital, and had smiled to see Arthur resign himself to the attention.

Merlin returned with beer and the police write up from the warehouse scene a few hours later.

"I won't let anyone -"

"_Merlin_. The fussing?"

Merlin ducked his head, and felt the warm pressure of Arthur's palm at the back of his neck once more. Arthur's fingers touched his neck, the back of his shoulder, found the top of his spine; Merlin's breath came short and fast for a moment.

"I never," Arthur murmured, and didn't finish the sentence, another one of the thousand things he would probably never let himself say.

Merlin tipped his head back into the sensation of Arthur's fingers carding through the hair at the nape of his neck.

It could end here, Merlin thought, in a misplaced touch and with words left unvoiced.

"You could, maybe, someday," Merlin replied.

Or it could start over again.

. . . . .

  


. . . . .

They skirted the boundaries of desire for months.

Merlin didn't feel the change in Arthur's touch – Arthur had always thought of Merlin as his to drag into his office, to shove into the car, to pull close when one of them was injured – but felt it in the weight of Arthur's gaze.

He would catch Arthur staring at his hands as they went through paperwork, and would catch himself wondering what it would feel like to have the tip of Arthur's tongue flick at the tips of his fingers or press hot and damp to the back of his wrist. Or he'd find Arthur staring at him, with an odd, near tender, expression on his face, and Merlin would wonder what went through Arthur's mind in those moments before he'd shake himself and shout for Merlin to follow him into his office or out to his car.

And Merlin kept wondering, through the long, dull weeks, and at small, snatched moments during the longer, dangerous, tense ones when he would've gladly traded the sad silence of abandoned families and the quiet of the station morgue for dullness.

He knew Arthur, and had known him during both of their best and worst moments; now he wondered if he could know the softness of Arthur's mouth, the true strength of his body, the ways in which they could know each other, the other moments that could be discovered between them.

"You really were going to sleep here tonight, weren't you?" Merlin leaned against the door-frame of Arthur's office. He felt good, fizzy and warm with three pints of lager inside him and only the barest notion why he thought he ought to stop at the station on his way home from the pub.

"Not on purpose." Arthur's hair was rumpled up like he'd already had his head down on his desk that night. "I was finishing up all this." He nodded at the forms spread out before him. What would take Merlin ten, maybe fifteen, minutes on his computer back home would probably take Arthur at least a couple hours.

"You could've left that for the morning and gone out with us for a drink. You can relax once in a while, you know."

Arthur passed a hand over his face. "I'm relaxed. See. There. Relaxed."

"Taking off your necktie doesn't really count after the day, or week, that you've had."

"Huh. There's no pleasing you, is there?"

"There might be."

When Arthur undid the top few buttons of his shirt and leaned back in his chair, Merlin almost went to him. Instead, though, he shut the door behind him and let Arthur walk up to him, settle his hands at Merlin's waist, and brush his nose over Merlin's.

"What is it, then, that pleases you?"

Merlin pondered "Do that again," he replied after Arthur's lips touched to his.

Arthur looked surprised, as if he might refuse.

"Do it. Again."

Then he just looked _hungry_. He kissed Merlin again, and again, and once more when Merlin tugged him closer, until they were both short of breath.

"Not here, I can't. I want to, but not here." Arthur rested his forehead against Merlin's. "What do you want?"

"Take me to yours." He closed his eyes and what had been the headiness of a few drinks turned to that of anticipation.

Tonight, Merlin didn't want to go home. No, he didn't want to go back to the past he'd left behind thirty-three years in the future; he didn't want to go back to his depressing avocado green flat, either, a space too crowded with restless dreams and memories.

He wanted Arthur, his offer of rough, uncertain affection, and the hunger that gleamed in Arthur's eyes and guided his fingers.

They fell into each other once they reached Arthur's sitting room. Merlin's favorite part, his absolute favorite part of kissing and touching Arthur, was watching how he really had found out how to break Arthur down. Not into a series of comprehensible items, but into a tumbled mess of gasping, hitching breaths, his mouth eager and body arching up against Merlin's.

First on the sofa, half their clothes tossed to the floor, Merlin's mouth at Arthur's neck and his hand working to undo Arthur's belt and trousers. He jacked Arthur off there, rough and fast, capturing each of Arthur's gasps against his own lips and muttering stupid, soothing things when Arthur came.

Later on the bed, Arthur already wrecked, Merlin palming his own cock, watching himself and watching Arthur's eyes grow dark with want all over again. Arthur moved in close enough to kiss Merlin's shoulder and his chest, nuzzling soft and slow before touching him with fingers warm, yet uncertain about this newness between them. He kissed the few faint scar-marks on Merlin's chest, skimmed his palm over Merlin's stomach, looked almost shy with need until Merlin shuddered beneath his hand.

"Keep on touching me, keep touching. That. Oh god." Merlin pressed his hand over Arthur's to direct him, not caring when Arthur fumbled, as long as he kept on touching Merlin.

"You just like telling me what to do."

"Yeah. Yeah, I do."

Merlin trembled. Even hesitant, even inexperienced with the feel of another man's dick in his hand, Arthur was making Merlin dizzy with want. It felt like, fuck, it like it had been years since he'd been touched, years since anyone wanted to make him come, years since he'd felt this good inside his own body. The sheets on Arthur's bed were rumpled and damp, and Arthur curved closer to Merlin, his breath hot and harsh against Merlin's skin. Merlin hadn't known this, hadn't known how badly he wanted to feel need course through him sudden and violent, how much desire there was bound up inside Arthur, and how it would thread through every movement of his body, every catch of his breath.

Merlin spilled over both their hands, body taut, then loose and sated with the warmth of orgasm.

It was a while before he could rouse himself from the closeness of Arthur's body, the scent of flushed skin and sweat and sex all over the both of them. When he came back to bed, Arthur smiled at him and shoved a pillow in his direction.

"Stay?" he asked, too sleepy and satisfied to hide the undertone of need in his voice. "Sleep?"

Merlin nodded and tucked himself in next to Arthur once more. He already knew how easy it would be to sleep, dreamless, next to Arthur.


End file.
